İş Kazaları Riskini Belirlemede Çalışma Ortamının ve Demografik Değişkenlerin Araştırılması: Elektrik Dağıtım Şirketi Örneği (İngilizce)
While technology offers many benefits to humanity, it brings with it many drawbacks. On the one hand, people benefit from the blessings brought by technology; they are exposed to the negative effects of technology at school, at home, on the street, in transportation vehicles, and especially at workplaces. Using the technology or using it inadequately increases the risks for life and improper use creates many extra risks. In particular, employees face many drawbacks in the workplace environment, due to inability to use technology, inadequate use or misuse. These drawbacks must be eliminated or minimized.
Electrical energy is the main input of all kinds of economic activity. The operation of today's technology is almost entirely dependent on the use of electrical energy. This dependence on electricity energy, the amount of energy consumption and the share of total consumption is constantly rising. Electricity generation, transmission and distribution units are of great importance in the delivery of electrical energy to the final consumer. Therefore, the accidents that will occur in these units cause the problems of lighting, problems of lighting and other problems in the institutions and organizations that provide energy from these systems until the unit is reactivated. Therefore, the indirect costs of the boiler that may occur in one of the electrical units can be much higher than the direct costs.
Occupational health and safety is considered as one of the most important and important subjects of business life. A work goose is defined as events that occur suddenly during the execution of the work , often causing injury, damage to tools and equipment, or cutting the production for a while . (Ceylan, 2000). occupational accidents along withoccupational diseases are the leading risks in business life. Accidents at work; As a result of many factors that cause loss of life and property, it occurs unexpectedly. The factors resulting from the environment, design faults, system failures, human disabilities, lack of education and supervision, and the interaction of the factors separately or together cause work accidents. Communication failures, communication accidents, indirect statements, and unexpected unfortunate situations can also cause work accidents . These factors put workers under threat of occupational accidents (Kaiser and Schindler, 1999: 59-75; Cop and Ofluoglu, 1998: 152-160). 80% personal defects, 18% physical and mechanical environmental conditions, and 2% unpredictable events are considered among the causes of occupational accidents (Atılgan et al., 2015: 664).
More than 2.78 million people die every year in the world due to occupational accidents or work-related diseases. Moreover, more than 374 million people experience non-fatal occupational accidents (ILO, Safety and health at work) every year. At least three employees are injured every second in the world as a result of a work accident. Employees lose their lives due to occupational accidents or occupational diseases every three minutes (TC Presidency State Supervisory Board, 2008: 256).
The rate of occupational accidents varies depending on the level of human development and education as well as the value given to human. The frequency of occupational accidents is recognized as an important indicator of the level of development of countries. It is observed that the rate of occupational accidents in our country is very high compared to developed countries. Although important steps are being taken in this area, our country is still behind the developed countries (Gümüş, 2017: 277). Occupational safety and health in developing countries is much worse than in industrialized countries. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO) surveys, the rate of occupational accidents is higher in small and medium-sized enterprises than in large-scale enterprises (Ekin, 1993: 24-30).
Employers in small and medium sized enterprises in our country are not generally conscious about occupational safety. They consider occupational health and safety issues not as a responsibility but as a blessing to their employees. Trainings and inspections on occupational health and safety are not sufficient. Naturally, this is one of the most important reasons for the increase of occupational accidents. In addition, the number of uninsured employees in small and medium sized enterprises is higher than the rate of large enterprises. The reliability of the accident statistics is also questionable due to the fact that uninsured workers are not notified of the accidents they are subjected to (South, 1990: 106; Camkurt, 2007: 80; Uysal et al., 2005: 440).
Occupational accidents and occupational diseases; It is an undeniable fact that it is a very important issue concerning employees, employers, the state and the whole society when it comes to the negative results it creates. Therefore, it is necessary to take into consideration the problems encountered in the subject within the framework of the standards envisaged by the international institutions without neglecting the human dimension of the issue.
The aim of this study was to investigate the risk factors related to occupational accidents and to determine whether the work environment and demographic characteristics constitute risk factors. The study included 492 employees of an electricity distribution company to investigate risk factors for work-related accidents.
